A local basketball hero comes to a sad end. An aging movie legend’s power ebbs. A once promising artist reaches out to an old friend with astonishing results. A long-divorced couple meet for the last time. When his brother dies, his only sibling considers their life-long relationship. The author wonders who will remember his long-dead beloved grandfather and muses about his own mortality. These short stories and poems explore the human heart with empathy and insight. Writing that is personal and universal.

In this book, Patrice Martinez invites us on a journey. It is a collection of four brief stories that enables us to look into the social, religious and adventurous life of the Hellenists.

For his fourteenth birthday, Atlas Sterling celebrated with his family at his favorite pizza restaurant. Three days later, he was abducted from his bed and taken to the planet Titan, 9,000 light years away. Forcibly conscripted into the Titan Academy, Atlas and fourteen other fourteen-year-olds must train to fulfill an ancient, interstellar prophecy by discovering and securing a legendary relic of incomprehensible power, the Celestial Sphere. Shrouded in myth and mystery, the Celestial Sphere holds the power to bring peace to the Galaxy. Whole civilizations have annihilated themselves and others seeking for it. Atlas has no choice. Uncovering the secrets of the Sphere is the only path that brings he and his friends home alive.

The searing conclusion of the thrilling epic fantasy trilogy that saw a young girl trained by an arcane order of nuns grow into the fiercest of warriors... They came against her as a child. Now they face the woman. The ice is advancing, the Corridor narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west. Everywhere, the emperor’s armies are in retreat. Nona Grey faces the final challenges that must be overcome if she is to become a full sister in the order of her choice. But it seems unlikely that she and her friends will have time to earn a nun’s habit before war is on their doorstep. Even a warrior like Nona cannot hope to turn the tide of war. The shiphearts offer strength that she might use to protect those she loves, but it’s a power that corrupts. A final battle is coming in which she will be torn between friends, unable to save them all. A battle in which her own demons will try to unmake her. A battle in which hearts will be broken, lovers lost, thrones burned.

They're here. They ride. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Born of a match between good and evil, four siblings stand between hell's minions and everything they want to destroy. They are the Lords of Deliverance, and they have the power to ward off Doomsday . . . or let it ride . . . Lethal Rider Thanatos, the most deadly Horseman of the Apocalypse, has endured thousands of years of celibacy to prevent the end of days. But just one night with the wickedly sexy Aegis Guardian, ReganCooper, shatters centuries of resolve. Yet their passion comes with a price. And Thanatos must face a truth more terrifying than an apocalypse-he's about to become a father. Demon-slayer Regan Cooper never imagined herself the maternal type, but with the fate of the world hanging in the balance she had no choice but to seduce Thanatos and bear his child. Now, as the final battle draws closer and his rage at being betrayed is overshadowed by an undeniable passion for the mother of his child, Thanatos has a life-shattering realization: To save the world, he must sacrifice the only thing he's ever wanted-a family.

Young Gillom Rogers has just given the coup de grace to a famous gunfighter involved in a bloody saloon shootout in 1901 El Paso, Texas. After swiping J.B. Books's matched Remington pistols off his body, Gillom thinks he may be able to ride this spectacle to fame and glory as the last shootist. But Gillom is an eighteen-year-old with lots of growing up to do, and showing off his new pistols quickly gets him into a gunfight he didn't bargain for. Gillom sets out for adventure, determined to become a shootist like his hero, John Bernard Books. On his dangerous journey into manhood, he runs into yellow journalists, a New Mexican horse breaker, and a train robber. When he meets a Hispanic saloon dancer named Anel in the booming copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, Gillom Rogers is forced to reconsider what kind of man he really wants to be. Miles Swarthout's The Last Shootist is the sequel to one of the most famous Westerns ever written, and concludes the tale of a junior shootist's coming-of-age in a dazzling gunfight in a deadly pimp's whorehouse, as a trio of fiery teenagers ride hard into a new twentieth century. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Taking off where Darpocalypse left off, Dar and her weary band of survivors flee Boston in two eighteen wheelers in order to meet up with her family in Washington State. Pursued by an army general hell-bent on capturing Dar’s most precious cargo, the group embarks on a cross country journey through the zombie-infested heart of America.

Immerse your students in history by having them participate in events as a literary or historical figure. After describing the concept behind persona-based enrichment, the authors describe how to use it with the curriculum, and include five complete literature-based enrichment units with performance recommendations, a list of personas, and a variety of library/classroom activities and projects. Grades 4-7.